I have been accused of late as being kind of a negative guy. I don't really see that but I can understand how people who don't really know me might say that. After all I have very publicly stated that (a) I believe President Bush may cancel the 2008 election and set himself up as essentially a quasi-dictator. Legislation exists that would allow for this to happen in the event of a national emergency so my expectation is that soon we may very well see that national emergency manifest, perhaps as a war with Iran, perhaps as something else.
I have also stated that (b) I expect the military draft to be reinstated if we go to war with anyone other than Iraq or East St. Louis. For my opinion as to the likelihood of this happening, please refer to (a) above.
In addition to that, I have also stated that I felt the housing market would "crash", that the easing of credit standards was due to a complicity of key players (and yes I think it is appropriate to insert the dreaded word "conspiracy" here) thus artificially inflating the values of homes.
This serves as a positive for the previous owners and especially the financial institutions underwriting the loans and a negative for anyone who utilized questionable mortgage packages to get into homes, based on the faulty concept that the equity value in their homes would rise faster than their payments. Any hiccup in this equation, of course, makes for a bad day and now as homes are dropping in value—since now no one can get loans to buy them—many of those people betting on rising home costs defraying their exposure will be crushed.
The subsequent bail out of the banks and lenders will have an even greater—although less visible (again insert the word "conspiracy" here if you so choose)—impact as the infusion of capital in to the markets to stave off runs to the banks with little red wagons is adding additional dollars in to the mix, thus potentially, ney probably, disrupting the lives of anyone on a fixed income or little old ladies with bags of fifties stashed in the mattress.
I renamed the Patriot Act "The Gestapo Bill" and have compared 9/11 to the burning of the Reichstag Building in Germany back in the early thirties. I published both of these comments on the internet 4 and a half years ago (Feb, 2003) so I have a long and loud history as a cynic.
The reason I bring all this up is that like canaries in the mines or cows before an earthquake, many of my closest friends have gone through tremendous psychic upheavals over the past year.
Almost ALL of my closest friends who were/are professional psychics (as I used to be) have just been ripped apart, like a shamanic cleansing with a roto-rooter and my guess is that many other creative sensitive types in this country (and throughout the world) have also felt this pervasive sense of angst and discomfort.
I am not just talking about thinking "oh, things are fucked up". I am talking about a real fundamental internal malaise that feels in many ways as if the world is going to end.
I believe there are many of us who feel this and, to that end, I would like to write about it and share our stories and our coping mechanisms and try to catalogue them into a book. In addition to my current project on music and magick and creativity, I also would like to talk to you if you, too, have felt this "thing" within. Even if nothing comes of this as a creative project, perhaps there may be some comfort for all of us in this state to reach out to others and see that we are not alone in having these feelings.
I believe that life is essentially good. I also believe that we are now facing a very difficult time in this country and we may soon be faced with issues that are unusual and taxing and in many ways quite demoralizing. For those of my brothers and sisters who also feel this canary in the mine angst, I look forward to hearing from you.
Together all of us canaries (if we sing together) can perhaps make a difference, after all.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Music and Magic
More than ever in this whacked out world it is through the opening of our heart and soul that we must search for answers. I believe music is a quick entree for unleashing the passions inside us to help move us, perhaps, towards a better world. I have always believed that art and poetry and theatre and music (especially music) are prime vehicles for helping us realize those dreams.
To that end my latest project is going to be a book on music and musicians who use metaphysics/magick/consciousness expansion techniques as a tool to help with creativity and song writing--as well as bands that rock out enough to fuck with other people's minds, too, and serve as an alarm clock to the masses.
And by "rockin out" I don't mean that bands can only be hard core--any genre/style that opens up to/with the heart to me "rocks". Period.
If there are any of you who may be interested, perhaps, in being involved in this project please let me know if this is something that rings true for your world. If so, I would love to hear from you. I have several friends already in mind for this but I am anxious to hear from all of you.
I want now, at this point in my life/career, to start doing more writing about music and musicians as I feel that music, more than anything, is the key to taking back the minds and hearts of the sheep.
I really do believe that.
I was part of a group looking at starting an indie label here in Northern California--no money of course but still maybe worthwhile--and I am looking more and more at focusing on putting politics/magick/and music all in to one kick-ass stew.
It is a fucked up world, no doubt, but good music still does what it always did and that is worth keeping alive, no matter what.
To that end my latest project is going to be a book on music and musicians who use metaphysics/magick/consciousness expansion techniques as a tool to help with creativity and song writing--as well as bands that rock out enough to fuck with other people's minds, too, and serve as an alarm clock to the masses.
And by "rockin out" I don't mean that bands can only be hard core--any genre/style that opens up to/with the heart to me "rocks". Period.
If there are any of you who may be interested, perhaps, in being involved in this project please let me know if this is something that rings true for your world. If so, I would love to hear from you. I have several friends already in mind for this but I am anxious to hear from all of you.
I want now, at this point in my life/career, to start doing more writing about music and musicians as I feel that music, more than anything, is the key to taking back the minds and hearts of the sheep.
I really do believe that.
I was part of a group looking at starting an indie label here in Northern California--no money of course but still maybe worthwhile--and I am looking more and more at focusing on putting politics/magick/and music all in to one kick-ass stew.
It is a fucked up world, no doubt, but good music still does what it always did and that is worth keeping alive, no matter what.
Writers who have helped shape my World View
When I was young--very early 20's--I was drawn to "counter-culture" icons like Tom Robbins and Richard Brautigan and a new book by either was, to me, an event to look forward to. After I started opening up as a young psychic-to-be, I was drawn to books, I guess fairly naturally, that were about young men "trying to figure it out"--Maugham's "The Razor's Edge" and Hesse's "Demian" and "Steppenwolf" being some of the most important and memorable to me.
Two writers now I read alot--but almost always their non-fiction rather than their novels--are Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, although I REALLY am looking forward to reading Mailer's latest novel about Hitler "The Castle in the Forrest".
As a playwright, I was drawn to the German Expressionists and Absurdists and was, for a time, really in to Samuel Beckett. Nikki Giovanni is very important in my life but as a creative writing teacher she was more of a second mother to me than anything else. The poet Mark Strand was once my "idol"--the stud poet and that is what he was--and he and I used to talk quite a bit and he is also then an important part of my past literary landscape.
I have an admiration for many of the 19th century German writers like Nietzche, Holderlin, and Goethe as well as many of the Middle European writers of the early 20th century, such as Thomas Mann, Hesse, Rilke, Doblin, Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig, et al.
I know, for myself, that these writers have been huge influences on me both sytlistically and in terms of the thematic elements of their work. I wrote about the occult novelist Gustav Meyrink and the whole pre-Nazi era as well as some of the late 18th Century sturm und drang vibe too is, I think, absolutely intoxicating.
Thomas Mann ("The Magic Mountain" and "Death in Venice") and Hermann Hesse ("Steppenwolf" and "Siddhartha") were both German writers who opposed the Nazis and both were Nobel Prize winners. Rainier Maria Rilke was a great German-Czech poet (and the name of my myspace page "The Lyre Among Shadows" is taken from a line in his "Sonnets to Orpheus" which goes something like this:
"Only one who has lifted the lyre among shadows may divining render the infinite praise").
Alfred Doblin, Stefan Zweig. and Joseph Roth were German writers of the early '20's and '30's. Doblin's most famous work was "Berlin Alexanderlatz" which was made into a movie/mini-series by the great German film maker Ranier Werner Fassbinder.
Zweig was a pacifist who fled the Nazis and who committed suicide with his wife in South America in the early 40's. He was famous then but almost forgotten now, same with Joesph Roth (another Jewish writer) who wrote "The Radetzky March" among others, and died in 1939 after fleeing Germany for France in 1933.
Even though I am a psychic (aren''t we all supposedly stupid) and a college drop-out, too, I have spent a LOT of time wandering through book stores and libraries and well eventually you see these books and you just somehow remember them and get to know them.
As Thomas Jefferson once said "I cannot live without books". And, sadly, I really can't.
Two writers now I read alot--but almost always their non-fiction rather than their novels--are Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, although I REALLY am looking forward to reading Mailer's latest novel about Hitler "The Castle in the Forrest".
As a playwright, I was drawn to the German Expressionists and Absurdists and was, for a time, really in to Samuel Beckett. Nikki Giovanni is very important in my life but as a creative writing teacher she was more of a second mother to me than anything else. The poet Mark Strand was once my "idol"--the stud poet and that is what he was--and he and I used to talk quite a bit and he is also then an important part of my past literary landscape.
I have an admiration for many of the 19th century German writers like Nietzche, Holderlin, and Goethe as well as many of the Middle European writers of the early 20th century, such as Thomas Mann, Hesse, Rilke, Doblin, Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig, et al.
I know, for myself, that these writers have been huge influences on me both sytlistically and in terms of the thematic elements of their work. I wrote about the occult novelist Gustav Meyrink and the whole pre-Nazi era as well as some of the late 18th Century sturm und drang vibe too is, I think, absolutely intoxicating.
Thomas Mann ("The Magic Mountain" and "Death in Venice") and Hermann Hesse ("Steppenwolf" and "Siddhartha") were both German writers who opposed the Nazis and both were Nobel Prize winners. Rainier Maria Rilke was a great German-Czech poet (and the name of my myspace page "The Lyre Among Shadows" is taken from a line in his "Sonnets to Orpheus" which goes something like this:
"Only one who has lifted the lyre among shadows may divining render the infinite praise").
Alfred Doblin, Stefan Zweig. and Joseph Roth were German writers of the early '20's and '30's. Doblin's most famous work was "Berlin Alexanderlatz" which was made into a movie/mini-series by the great German film maker Ranier Werner Fassbinder.
Zweig was a pacifist who fled the Nazis and who committed suicide with his wife in South America in the early 40's. He was famous then but almost forgotten now, same with Joesph Roth (another Jewish writer) who wrote "The Radetzky March" among others, and died in 1939 after fleeing Germany for France in 1933.
Even though I am a psychic (aren''t we all supposedly stupid) and a college drop-out, too, I have spent a LOT of time wandering through book stores and libraries and well eventually you see these books and you just somehow remember them and get to know them.
As Thomas Jefferson once said "I cannot live without books". And, sadly, I really can't.
The Rock n Roll Psychic Bands of the Week
GOGOL BORDELLO I saw them perfom a few weeks back on "The Henry Rollins Show". They are kind of an Eastern European gypsy punk something or other wild thing conglomeration but they totally rock! My favorite song: "60 Revolutions"--awesome band.
Gogol Bordello
54 Nude Honeys Asian punk princesses, coming off their "Sexy Pistols Tour"--you have got to love that--these girls are the full package: high energy, photogenic, and they can play.
54 Nude Honeys
The Blow My daughter Riana turned me on to this band and I got two minutes of "Cool Dad" street cred when I took her into Berkeley and found their CD at Amoeba Records.
The Blow
Ten Years After An oldie but goody, Ten Years After was a late 60's blues based hard rock band fronted by one of the truly great guitarists of all time, Alvin Lee, who made a name for themselves with their performance at the original Woodstock. The song "I'm Coming Home" was one of my favorites way back when and helped strengthen my pre-punker neck muscles back in Junior High.
Ten Years After
The New York Dolls I have written elsewhere that my single most intense reaction ever to any song was when I first heard "Personality Crisis" back when I was in High School in Ohio. The Dolls crossed genres and genders and I had never seen or heard anything like them when they first came along. Fronted by David Johansen (who later reinvented himself on MTV as Buster Poindexter) with Sylvain Sylvain and the late, great Johnny Thunders on guitar, they are perhaps the glammest of all the Glam bands, ever. Nothing like them before--they were truly unique. One of my favorite bands of all time.
The New York Dolls
And don't forget, if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, please come into the city tonight and watch Allegra Shock perform at The Hotel Utah Saloon at 4th and Bryant, near AT&T park. The show starts at 9:00 PM.
Geography 101: Please Please share your maps with the Needy
Since I once dated a girl (true) who was a finalist for Miss Teen Age North Carolina I find these videos particularly entertaining. Please, if you have extra maps, can you share them with those less fortunate.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Pee Wee Football
When I was a little boy (about 8 or 9) I got a football for Christmas (it was autographed by my favorite player, too--Glynn Griffing--I bet you don't hear that name too often; he was an All-American QB at Ole Miss who played one year in the NFL as a back-up to Y. A. Tittle with the '63 N.Y. Giants) and I slept with it tucked under my arm, happy as a four-year-old with a stuffed bear. Of course, everyone in my family got a good laugh about it but I loved my new football and way back then football was my true love--the sport I dreamed of, at that time much more so than baseball or any other sport could possibly be.
It didn't take long before we wore that football out but it was followed by dozens of others. All throughout my teens and twenties, though, I fantasized about getting an official NFL football but they were pretty expensive and it seemed sort of ridiculous at my age to attach so much meaning to this particular ball so I always ended up with something a little less grandiose. Finally, though, when I was 30 years old, I just said "fuck it" and broke down and finally bought one!
It was great, too. I ran pass patterns and played catch almost every day that summer, even with school (yes, at the age of 30 I was still going to school) and softball four or five nights a week--plus basketball and four days (at least) lifting weights. As a child, and later when I actually played, I would drift off to sleep dreaming of touchdowns knowing I could reach out and snatch the ball out of the air, cuddling the leather with the tips of my fingers.
There is an old adage, and very true it is, to "be careful what you wish for" because within months of buying my new dream ball I broke the radial head of my elbow in two and my days of reaching out to grab a football, or reaching up to grab any ball, were not over, exactly, but changed. Drastically changed. I still have my beautiful ball but it is partially deflated sitting in my upstairs closet.
I bring all this up not so you'll boo hoo over my arm but just to let you know that I loved football as a child and dreamed of it, often--more often, perhaps, than I dreamed of baseball. But I don't find the same joy in football that I do in baseball. And it has nothing to do with my arm or my poor, unused, fantasy football.
It is just that, now, baseball's rhythms reflect more of who I am, where playing football, and later basketball, reflected more who I was as a younger man. I think it is important that we learn to recognize the rhythm of our body, even if that means accepting the passage of time and the inevitable erosion of our athletic skills. For me, the quiet intensity of baseball reflects my spirit much more so than the intense passion of that most Wagnerian of sports-- American football.
Even so, football is a great game. I loved it so much as a child and that incredible passion for the sport lingers with me still.
It just takes me a little longer to run down the field. That's all.
It didn't take long before we wore that football out but it was followed by dozens of others. All throughout my teens and twenties, though, I fantasized about getting an official NFL football but they were pretty expensive and it seemed sort of ridiculous at my age to attach so much meaning to this particular ball so I always ended up with something a little less grandiose. Finally, though, when I was 30 years old, I just said "fuck it" and broke down and finally bought one!
It was great, too. I ran pass patterns and played catch almost every day that summer, even with school (yes, at the age of 30 I was still going to school) and softball four or five nights a week--plus basketball and four days (at least) lifting weights. As a child, and later when I actually played, I would drift off to sleep dreaming of touchdowns knowing I could reach out and snatch the ball out of the air, cuddling the leather with the tips of my fingers.
There is an old adage, and very true it is, to "be careful what you wish for" because within months of buying my new dream ball I broke the radial head of my elbow in two and my days of reaching out to grab a football, or reaching up to grab any ball, were not over, exactly, but changed. Drastically changed. I still have my beautiful ball but it is partially deflated sitting in my upstairs closet.
I bring all this up not so you'll boo hoo over my arm but just to let you know that I loved football as a child and dreamed of it, often--more often, perhaps, than I dreamed of baseball. But I don't find the same joy in football that I do in baseball. And it has nothing to do with my arm or my poor, unused, fantasy football.
It is just that, now, baseball's rhythms reflect more of who I am, where playing football, and later basketball, reflected more who I was as a younger man. I think it is important that we learn to recognize the rhythm of our body, even if that means accepting the passage of time and the inevitable erosion of our athletic skills. For me, the quiet intensity of baseball reflects my spirit much more so than the intense passion of that most Wagnerian of sports-- American football.
Even so, football is a great game. I loved it so much as a child and that incredible passion for the sport lingers with me still.
It just takes me a little longer to run down the field. That's all.
Songs that Rocked my World
All of us have probably had songs or bands that had a profound impact on us at one time or another--it is not just that you liked them or thought they were good but, somehow, they magically changed your inner landscape. Here are mine (in chronological order):
1) "Born to be Wild" -- Steppenwolf. I was just a little dude (around 11, I guess) when I first heard this. The Beatles and the Stones and then all the Psychedelic bands all hit when I was around 9 or 10 years old but the first group that really knocked me for a loop was Steppenwolf.
2) "Cold Turkey" --John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band. I was probably around 13 or so when this and "Instant Karma" came out--just after the Beatles split, no more Beatles cartoons on Saturday morning, and this song also was like a lightning rod to me.
3) "Personality Crisis" -- New York Dolls. I was listening to Glam a lot, not knowing even what "Glam" was and certainly not knowing what it looked like--especially Slade and T. Rex but when I first heard this I, literally, walked around in a daze. THE biggest most intense reaction EVER to any one song was this one.
4) "Rock and Roll All Nite" -- Kiss. I was totally in to Kiss when they first showed up and saw them live early on. This song with its hooks totally floored me. I was still, on the surface, the Frat boy jock but my tastes were pointing me down a path away from that world and I remember constantly getting shit about listening to Kiss back in the early to mid '70's.
5) "God Save the Queen" -- The Sex Pistols. After the New York Dolls, the second cosmic shift came with punk. God how I HATED Disco and when I heard the Sex Pistols my world, once again, took a sharp turn to the left.
6) "Pump it Up" -- Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Early Elvis (just like early Elivis Presley, too) was fantastic and every song on every album was incredible. The only person back then who I bought their new album almost the day it came out. Later I became very disappointed with Elvis Costello but back then, in the '70's, he was incredible.
7) "People who Died" -- Jim Carroll Band. A poet turned rocker I listened to this album, "Catholic Boy", over and over and over again.
All these bands/songs came out by the time I was 24-25 and since then I have found many bands I like but none has impacted me in the same way. Maybe that is because I am older--maybe, maybe not. But these songs were big deals to me at the time.
The biggest though--based on what it did to me AT THE TIME--was The Dolls and "Personality Crisis", followed by the Sex Pistols.
1) "Born to be Wild" -- Steppenwolf. I was just a little dude (around 11, I guess) when I first heard this. The Beatles and the Stones and then all the Psychedelic bands all hit when I was around 9 or 10 years old but the first group that really knocked me for a loop was Steppenwolf.
2) "Cold Turkey" --John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band. I was probably around 13 or so when this and "Instant Karma" came out--just after the Beatles split, no more Beatles cartoons on Saturday morning, and this song also was like a lightning rod to me.
3) "Personality Crisis" -- New York Dolls. I was listening to Glam a lot, not knowing even what "Glam" was and certainly not knowing what it looked like--especially Slade and T. Rex but when I first heard this I, literally, walked around in a daze. THE biggest most intense reaction EVER to any one song was this one.
4) "Rock and Roll All Nite" -- Kiss. I was totally in to Kiss when they first showed up and saw them live early on. This song with its hooks totally floored me. I was still, on the surface, the Frat boy jock but my tastes were pointing me down a path away from that world and I remember constantly getting shit about listening to Kiss back in the early to mid '70's.
5) "God Save the Queen" -- The Sex Pistols. After the New York Dolls, the second cosmic shift came with punk. God how I HATED Disco and when I heard the Sex Pistols my world, once again, took a sharp turn to the left.
6) "Pump it Up" -- Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Early Elvis (just like early Elivis Presley, too) was fantastic and every song on every album was incredible. The only person back then who I bought their new album almost the day it came out. Later I became very disappointed with Elvis Costello but back then, in the '70's, he was incredible.
7) "People who Died" -- Jim Carroll Band. A poet turned rocker I listened to this album, "Catholic Boy", over and over and over again.
All these bands/songs came out by the time I was 24-25 and since then I have found many bands I like but none has impacted me in the same way. Maybe that is because I am older--maybe, maybe not. But these songs were big deals to me at the time.
The biggest though--based on what it did to me AT THE TIME--was The Dolls and "Personality Crisis", followed by the Sex Pistols.
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